Earnings at U.S. retailers will fall 20 percent in 2009

The International Council of Shopping Centers in New York predicts 73,000 U.S. stores may shut in the first half of 2009 after what may have been the worst holiday-shopping season in 40 years.

 That’s after about 148,000 stores
closed last year, the most since the 2001 recession, according to the
trade group.

“You’ll see department stores,
specialty stores, discount stores, grocery stores, drugstores, major
chains — either multi- regionally or nationally — go out,” said
Burt Flickinger, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a
retail-industry consulting firm in New York.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest
retailer, may report a 6 percent profit increase this year by
offering lower prices to consumers seeking bargains, according to
estimates.